The internet is a glorious treasure trove for readers. There are millions of books out there – but how do you find them in the first place? Here are twelve cool sites for readers who want to find books, review books, trade books and maybe even sell a few.
Storygraph, LibraryThing and Bookwyrm
These three sites are all designed around tracking your books and reading progress. They can all be used as alternatives to Amazon-owned Goodreads. Storygraph has a modern feel and allows authors to upload content warnings for their books. LibraryThing is an old-fashioned website with active forums, book swap site integration and more. BookWyrm is a new up-and-coming type of fediverse website. For more information on BookWyrm, see laptop.lol’s Guide to the Fediverse.
Sacred Texts
Sacred Texts is exactly what it says on the tin, an online archive dedicated to hosting religious books. They have everything from African traditional religions to Zoroastrianism.
BookCrossing
Do you have books sitting on your shelf that you never read? Why not “release them into the wild” with BookCrossing? BookCrossing is a hobby where people leave free books in public places for others to take. Each book is given a unique code inside. Anyone who finds the BookCrossing code can look online to see where the book has been before. Readers are encouraged to pass the book on when they are done so the books can travel. Who knows how far your books will go?
Project Gutenberg and LibriVox
Do you like classic books? Project Gutenberg is an archive with over 75,000 ebooks. You can download the books in different formats.
How about audiobooks? LibriVox is a collaborative project dedicated to creating free audiobooks of books that are in the public domain. If you have a nice voice, you can volunteer to be a narrator!
Smashwords
Do you love ebooks? Then you should check out Smashwords, a website with over one million ebooks. Some ebooks are free, others are for sale. All ebooks are DRM-free, which means you can transfer the files to any ereader you like.
Little Free Library
Have you ever dreamed of being a librarian? If you have just a little space, you can be! Build a Little Free Library and let people give, take and borrow books as they please. Click here for a world map of Little Free Libraries.
Open Library
The Open Library’s goal is to create “one webpage for every book ever published.” This is a project of the Internet Archive, so you can find many ebook versions of out-of-print books which are difficult to find elsewhere.
BookFinder
If you prefer physical books instead, BookFinder is a great resource. Enter a title and author and BookFinder will search the web to show you which website is selling it for the cheapest price. Search results are split into two columns, new editions and used books. This is a useful tool for finding affordable copies of rare books.
World of Books
What if you have too many books? If you find yourself with too many books, you can sell them easily with the World of Books app. Just use your phone’s camera to scan the barcode on each book and the app will tell you what they will pay for that book. Then all you have to do is pack the books in a box and send it to their warehouse. They pay for shipping.
